Imagery and remote sensing has always been one of my areas of interest in GIS. As a support analyst at Esri Australia I get a large number of imagery-related questions and I often help clients learn how to process their geospatial imagery and LiDAR data in ArcGIS.

Lidar (or Light Detection and Ranging) technology has become very popular and accessible in recent years. Because it provides high resolution elevation data, it’s now extensively used in the GIS world for mapping, spatial analysis and 3D visualization.

Although Lidar data can be used in many of the ArcGIS Desktop software, it turns out that many users are not aware of some basic workflows that can be utilized to extract raster Digital Elevation Models from their LAS point clouds in ArcGIS.

The question “how do I create a DEM from my Lidar data” is one of the most frequently asked questions when it…